Simon Hart is a Telegraph Sport writer, who has covered six Olympic Games as well as the 2012 host city election in Singapore.

Scandal: Wang Junxia (right) has joined the Hall of Fame (Photo: REUTERS)

The International Association of Athletics Federations has shot itself in the foot again with its announcement of a new Hall of Fame.

On the eve of the World Indoor Championships in Istanbul, the world governing body announced the names of 12 athletes who will become inaugural members its exclusive club, which it is launching as part of its centenary celebrations this year.

No-one could argue with the choice of athletes like the great Jesse Owens, Paavo Nurmi, Emil Zatopek, Edwin Moses and Fanny Blankers-Koen, but the inclusion of one name beggars belief.

Incredibly, the IAAF has seen fit to celebrate the career of Wang Junxia, the Chinese long-distance runner who was coached by the now discredited Ma Junren.

Ma, who claimed in the 1990s that he fed his world-beating “army” of female athletes turtle blood and a special fungus, is widely suspected of having given them something a little stronger, despite his vehement denials.

Even the Chinese authorities thought so when they sacked him from the country’s Olympic team in 2000 after six of his athletes failed dope tests.

On performances alone, there is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that his athletes, including Wang, were unnaturally quick during their brief period of overwhelming dominance.

On Sept 8, 1993, Wang sliced 42 seconds off the previous 10,000 metres world record at the Chinese national games with a scarcely credible time of 29min 31.78sec. Not only does her mark still stand today, no athlete has got within 22 seconds of it.

But Wang was not finished. Showing no sign of fatigue, she finished second behind compatriot Qu Yunxia in a 1500m race just three days later in which both women broke the old world record. Again, Qu’s mark still stands.

Then, on the subsequent two days, Wang ran successive world records in the heats and final of the 3,000m. And, yes, Wang’s world mark of 8min 6.11sec still stands. No-one has come within 15 seconds of it.

In its citation, the IAAF describes that little purple patch in Wang’s career as “remarkable”. Many would choose a different adjective.

Pointedly, Paula Radcliffe, a lifelong anti-drugs campaigner who beat Wang comfortably at the World Junior Cross Country Championships in Boston in 1992, posted a Twitter message to flag up an article on the Universal Sports website that described her nomination as “a cruel joke”.

Although Wang never failed a drug test, you have to wonder why the IAAF saw fit to honour such a controversial figure at a time when the sport is still recovering from the damage caused by the BALCO drug scandal nine years ago. It is not as if there are no other suitable candidates

A suspicious person would conclude that politics is at work here. China is, after all, hosting the IAAF’s flagship World Championships in 2015.

But it is a decision that cheapens an idea that was meant to celebrate the IAAF’s stewardship of the sport over the last century. In fact, it does the opposite.